The narrow alleyways of Scaredford closed in around Meera like a trap. Danny's mother stumbled through the labyrinthine streets, her worn dupatta trailing behind her like a ghost's shroud.
Two days. Two entire days since her son had walked out of their cramped room, claiming he was going to do some important work.
Two days since her world had crumbled into an endless cycle of worry and desperation.
'Where are you Danny?' She kept thinking while walking the familiar streets of Scaredford.
The calloused soles of her feet, hardened by years of walking on broken pavements, now bled freely as she rushed from corner to corner. Her sari once pristine white with delicate blue borders, a gift from Danny on her last birthday was now stained with dust, sweat, and the grime of streets she had been scouring endlessly.
Earlier that morning, she had gathered every ounce of courage and approached the imposing dark green gates of the SP's residence. The house stood like a fortress, its whitewashed walls gleaming in the harsh sunlight, surrounded by manicured gardens that seemed to mock her poverty.
She approached a security guard stationed outside the house of SP.
"I want to meet SP Sir. He knows my son ." Meera said to the Guard.
"Madam, our Sir doesn't meet with... people like you. And he sure doesn't know pests," one guard had cut her short, his uniform crisp and intimidating.
The guards had looked at her with disgust, their eyes taking in her weathered appearance, her trembling hands, and the desperation etched into every line of her face.
"Move along before we call the female guards."
The humiliation burned in her chest like acid, but it was nothing compared to the fear that gnawed at her soul.
Where was her Danny? What had happened to her boy?
Even if i can't meet SP I should go to the Police Station she thought.
Her next stop had been the local police station a huge white and blue building that reeked of corruption and indifference
The constable behind the desk barely looked up from his newspaper as she pleaded her case, her voice breaking with each word.
"Sir my Son Danny has not came home from the past two days." She pleaded in front of him.
"What do you mean he has not come. Where did he go and When?" the constable asked her a few more questions and then said to her.
"It hasn't been forty eight hours yet," he said with mechanical indifference, not bothering to put down his tea.
"I can't log any missing report before forty eight hours of that person going missing."
Besides, looking at you..." His eyes raked over her poor clothing, her calloused hands, her desperate expression.
"Maybe the boy finally got tired of this life. Can't blame him, really. You and your poverty probably drove him away."
The words hit her like physical blows, each one designed to wound. But Meera had endured worse. She had survived her husband Vinod's death, had raised Danny alone while working as a domestic helper in houses where she was treated like furniture.
She would survive this too. She had to for Danny. She kept looking for her son and despite it being night she was still not able to find her son.
The clock tower of Scaredford chimed eleven times as Meera found herself in the old market district, where vendors were closing their stalls and the streets slowly emptied.
Her vision blurred from exhaustion and dehydration, but she pressed on, checking every shadow, every doorway, every place where a lost boy might seek shelter.
Then she spotted him.
A familiar figure hunched over a small tea stall, the dying embers of a wood fire casting dancing shadows on his weathered face.
Fredrick D'Souza, the tea vendor she had known for years, was cleaning his stall.
"Fredrick!" she called out, her voice had became hoarse from hours of shouting Danny's name.
She stumbled toward him, her legs barely supporting her weight.
Fredrick looked up, his kind eyes immediately filling with concern as he took in her dishevelled appearance.
He was a good man, a Britisher from Manchester who had come to Scaredford twenty five years ago and never left.
His small tea stall had become a gathering place for college boys, a haven where students discussed their futures over cups of tea.
"Meera, what are you doing here so late?" he asked, locking his stall door with a thud and moving toward her with genuine worry. "You look exhausted... what happened?"
"Fredrick, have you seen Danny?"
The words tumbled out in a rush, desperation making her voice shake.
"It's been two days...two days Fredrick. Since he left and there is no sign of him. He said he was going for some work, but he never came home. I've looked everywhere, brother. Everywhere."
Her voice cracked on the last word, and she pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to stop the tears that threatened to fall.
Fredrick's expression grew serious.
He had known Danny since the boy was young, had watched him grow from a shy child into a determined young man. Danny was a good kid respectful, hardworking, the kind of boy who would never worry his mother unnecessarily.
"Actually, yes, Meera. I have seen him," Fredrick said slowly, his voice careful. "Danny came to my stall today, around evening time. But Meera..." He hesitated, seeing how she hung on his every word.
"Something was wrong with him."
Her heart stopped. "Wrong? What do you mean wrong? Was he hurt?" The questions came rapid fire, each one laced with a mother's worst fears.
"No, no, he wasn't hurt not physically, anyway," Fredrick said quickly, raising his hands to calm her.
"But... he looked different. His hair was red. Not the black hair he's always had, but a deep red colour. And his eyes..." He paused, struggling to find the right words. "They seemed distant, like he was looking through me rather than at me."
Meera looked at him like he had taken out a pigeon out of his hat.
"Red hair? But that's impossible. Danny has black hair, just like his father. What are you talking about?"
"I know how it sounds. But that wasn't the strangest part." Fredrick's voice dropped to almost a whisper.
"He was standing in the middle of the road like a statue. People were shouting at him, trying to move him out of the way, but he didn't budge. Like he was not even listening to them. So I took him aside, made him sit near my stall, and gave him tea and biscuits.
"When I asked him about himself, about where he'd been, he looked at me like he was trying to remember something from a dream. He said..." Fredrick swallowed hard.
"He said he had lost some of his memories. Not all of them, but pieces were missing. He didn't remember the stall, not even me , but he said he was remembering things in fragments. He kept touching his head like it was hurting him."
The world seemed to tilt around Meera. This couldn't be happening. First Vinod, taken from her in an accident when Danny was just thirteen.
Now Danny going missing and now acting strange...
"Where is he now?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper but carrying the weight of a mother's desperation.
"Fredrick, please tell me, where did he go?"
Fredrick pointed toward the eastern part of the city, where the government hospital's imposing structure could be seen even in the darkness.
"I saw him going toward the city park the one behind the hospital. He seemed worried, and even though I wanted to follow him, but I had customers and I couldn't abandon the stall."
"No, no, Fredrick you did right," Meera said, already turning in the direction he had pointed. "Thank you, Fredrick. Thank you for telling me."
"Wait!" Fredrick called out, grabbing a cloth bag from his stall. "Take this it's food. You look exhausted. You'll need it."
Grabbing the bag, Meera started running, her mother's instincts driving her forward despite her exhaustion. The park was at least an hour's walk away, but she would crawl there if she had to.
The government hospital loomed like a sleeping giant in the darkness, its white walls gleaming under the sparse streetlights.
Behind it, separated by a narrow road, lay the city park a sprawling green space that during the day was filled with families and children, but at night transformed into something else entirely a place of shadows and secrets, where the desperate came to find solace or answers.
Meera's chest burned with each breath as she finally reached the park's wrought iron gates. The security guard's booth was empty probably another case of government negligence and the gates stood open like a mouth waiting to swallow her whole.
The park's pathways were illuminated by scattered streetlights, many flickering intermittently, casting dancing shadows that made every bench, every tree, every corner seem alive with possibility.
The air was thick with the scent of jasmine and night blooming cereus, but underneath it all was something else a tension that made her skin crawl.
And then she saw him.
On a weathered concrete bench beneath a flickering streetlight sat a figure shrouded in darkness, so still he might have been carved from stone.
Even from a distance, she could see the familiar slope of his shoulders, the way he held his head, the general build that she had memorized through eighteen years of loving him.
She could finally make it that it was none other than her son Danny.
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